A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices and some politicians like to
refer to corporations as “persons.” Few actual people, though, could get
away with years of lawless behavior resulting in injuries and deaths, and
the destruction of entire communities and ways of life. To do that takes
the protection of a corporate charter and a legal and regulatory system
that has succumbed to concentrated money and power.

On Friday, two public interest groups asked the attorney
general of Delaware to revoke the charter of Massey Energy, a company they call a
criminal enterprise.

“Massey Energy operates outside the law,” says Lorelei Scarbro, who
lives a few miles from the West Virginia's Upper Big Branch mine, which is owned and
operated by Massey Energy. Scarbro traveled to Delaware to speak in
support of revoking the Massey charter. “The people of Appalachia are
collateral damage; they believe it's okay to wipe out a whole
culture.”

“I know people who have died. I know people raising family on
poisoned water. We need the attorney general to know that atrocities are
occurring..."

An April 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine claimed the lives
of 29 coal miners. The accident investigation, commissioned by West
Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, pins the blame for the disaster
squarely on Massey’s “total and catastrophic systemic failures … in the
context of a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable, where
deviation became the norm.”

According to the report, Massey is also responsible for “incalculable
damage to mountains, streams and air in the coalfields; creating health
risks for coalfield residents by polluting streams, injecting slurry
into the ground and failing to control coal waste dams and dust
emissions from processing plants; using vast amounts of money to
influence the political system; and battling government regulation
regarding safety in the coal mines and environmental safeguards for
communities.”

Massey is chartered in Delaware, which is known for its
corporate-friendly policies, although the company has no operations there.

The two public interest groups, Appalachian Voices and
Free Speech for People, cited the company’s long history of safety
violations in asking the state attorney general to revoke Massey’s
charter. They also pointed to the thousands of Clean Water Act
violations resulting from the company’s mountaintop removal mining
practices.

“It is well established that the corporate charter is a privilege,
not a right.”

“I know people who have died. I know people raising family on
poisoned water. We need the attorney general to know that atrocities are
occurring on the ground on account of an outlaw corporation,” Scarbro
said at a press conference on Friday. Scarbro is part of a family of
coal miners going back three generations, and a leading spokesperson in a
campaign to stop mountaintop removal mining on Coal River mountain and
instead install a 328-megawatt wind farm on its ridges.

How has Massey been able to routinely ignore health and safety standards and environmental regulations?

“Many politicians were afraid to challenge Massey's supremacy because
of the company's superb ongoing public relations campaign and because
CEO Don Blankenship was willing to spend vast amounts of money to
influence elections,” notes the report to Governor Tomblin. “In one
well-documented instance, he used his resources to elect a relatively
obscure judge to the state Supreme Court.”

“It is well established that the corporate charter is a privilege,
not a right,” says Jeff Clements, co-founder of Free Speech for People.
“Delaware, as with other states, reserves the right to revoke or forfeit
state corporate charters when they are abused or misused, as in cases
of repeated unlawful conduct.”

“The Massey Energy Company presents a classic case of a corporation whose charter should be revoked,” says Clements.

“We are strongly urging Attorney General [Beau] Biden to stand up to
corporate power and say, at some point, corporations do not have the
power to dismantle our democracy and to violate our laws willfully and
systematically,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been part of the effort to decharter Massey.

Jason Miller, a representative for the Delaware Department of
Justice, told YES! that the petition to revoke Massey Energy’s charter is
“under review.”

Interested?

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